Celebrating Historical Fiction!
by Linda Bennett Pennell
This was my first ever post for History Imagined and I thought the topic was worth visiting again. I believe that historical fiction is experiencing a renewed popularity and I have a question for you at the bottom of this post.
From time to time, literary critics and other publishing industry wags have heralded the demise of historical fiction only to be proven very wrong by the people who really matter, the readers. Though it waxes and wanes like any genre, historical fiction endures, perhaps to the dismay of some academicians, but it gives no indication of leaving us anytime soon. Its popularity has been evident from the publication of Sir Walter Scott’s Waverly, considered the first work of modern historical fiction. The first run of Waverly sold out in two days, an achievement to be envied by any author. Scott followed that success with others, most notably Ivanhoe, The Lady of the Lake, Rob Roy, and The Bride of Lammermoor. His works have enjoyed long life across multiple media, including comic books, movies, TV, and Donizetti’s opera Lucia di Lammermoor. Although Scott may have been the first, he was certainly not the last. Since the publication of Waverly in 1814, the list of successful works of historical fiction has grown long indeed. So why does historical fiction remain popular while there are so many persons who say they hated studying history in school?
In my opinion, it comes down to the difference between looking at history through the impersonal lens of academia verses having a personal experience through the close 
point of view writing found in most novels, especially historical romances. By its very definition and due to the rigors of academic investigation, the historian must remain objective and keep his/her subject at arm’s length. As Joe Friday on Dragnet would have said, “Just the facts, ma’am.” While historians do offer personal opinions by drawing conclusions, they do so only after a cold examination and evaluation of the evidence. The novelist, on the other hand, brings history to life by creating interesting characters living in richly described periods. In the hands of an adept novelist, we see what the characters see, we feel what they feel, we taste what they taste. Their experiences become our experiences, and in so doing, we are transported to another time and place. We, the readers, get to time travel without the mess and bother of leaving home.
That brings me to a question I am asked fairly frequently when the subject of studying history in the public schools comes up. In my other life, I was an educational administrator. People want to know if teaching novels in history classrooms is a good idea. My answer is a resounding yes, provided the selected books are well written, well researched, and teach the facts of the historical periods in which the books are set. It should be noted that to qualify as true historical fiction, works of any of the multiple sub-genres must rest upon a foundation of exacting research. That said, I have seen good history teachers turn kids who “hate history and reading” into avid readers and lovers of the past simply by using great novels and short stories to illustrate the historical points and eras they are studying.
Cases in point are Across Five Aprils by Irene Hunt, The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane, Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor . . . the list is a long one.
So, tell us. Why do you enjoy reading historical fiction? Did you like studying history when you were in school? Would you have enjoyed being taught history through the use of novels in the classroom?
As a reader and lover of historical fiction, I thought you might be interested in the following Facebook giveaway. Members of the Historical Novel Cooperative are celebrating historical fiction with a giveaway today. To access the giveaway, go to my Facebook page and follow the directions on the pinned post with the graphic shown below.
https://www.facebook.com/linda.bennettpennell.7/
Linda Bennett Pennell is an author of historical fiction set in the American South or about Southerners traveling far from home. While she writes about the land of her birth, anything with a history, whether shabby or regal, ancient or closer to our own day, has fascinated her since early childhood. This love of the past and the desire to create stories of it probably owes much to her Southern roots.
Southern families are filled with storytellers who keep family and community histories alive. It is in their blood and part of their birthright. Linda’s family had many such yarn spinners who entertained the family on cold winter evenings around her grandmother’s fireplace and during long summer afternoons on her wraparound porch. And most important of all, most of those stories were true.
Click here to connect with Linda and find out more about her writing.
I enjoy reading historical fiction because it is an extension of history but in that toe curling story form. I am greedy for anything historical, so yes I love studying History at school. I still read text books.
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Welcome to History Imagined! Thank you for stopping by! I still have all of my history textbooks from college. They are useful when I’m in the research stage of a WIP. Glad to know I’m not alone in the textbook thing. 🙂
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Hi, Linda, I’m very excited to see your new website on history. I’m writing historical, regional romances, set in the 1850’s and later. I learned to love history in tenth grade when I had a wonderful history teacher, Mr. Nolan. He taught us things about history with a humorous slant. And a little disrespect for the traditional way history was taught. He would say things like, “Old King George did not like what the colonials were doing…” and make history fun. I’ve also always loved reading books based on historical events or fictionalized historical stories. I guess I’m a gal who always thought I was born in the wrong time period. Thanks for having this site!
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Hi Kristine, thank you for stopping by! I think you and I had similar high school teachers. Mine was Mr. Montgomery. American History came alive in his class despite that fact that it was a large class that met in the auditorium, much like freshman survey courses are taught at universities. Loved that man and his class!
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Linda, what a lovely blog…and I smiled when I saw The Red Badge of Courage. I read it when I was young and it forever left an impression on me. I’ll look forward to drifting here, to find works I haven’t read.
To answer your question regarding novels as tools for teaching history, I definitely think it would be an excellent form of education.
Great, “first time out”! Congratulations to you and the rest of the “crew”. 🙂 Lo
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Thank you so much, Lo! I loved teaching reading through YA novels and I know my students loved it when the history teachers brought out novels.
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Yes, Linda, they must have been cut from the same cloth, as they say 😉 Wish we had more teachers like that, today.
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Sadly, high stakes testing is killing the joy of learning and of teaching. Accountability is necessary, but in it’s place. Unfortunately testing has become our sole focus and measure of success in today’s schools. It is criminal what we are doing to our kids and teachers.
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I am doing research on the comeback of the American historical romance genre, and realized, in my research, that a lot of what originally drew me to exploring American history was considered historical fiction–authors like John Jakes. I devoured his books when I was younger. I always put a romantic spin on them, tho, which is probably why I’m writing American historical romance today. Nice blog, got me to thinking.
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I like historical fiction in all of its forms and sub-genres. If it’s set in the past, it’s historical fiction to me!
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I enjoyed this posting very much, and I have a feeling I’m going to be visiting this blog often. I already read your engaging article about Mobile.
It’s interesting that you should draw such a bold line between academic history and historical fiction. I can certainly understand why you should do so; I’m a Sinologist, and academic books on Chinese history are not exactly my idea of good bedtime reading. However, I’ve always thought that the best academic history resembles historical fiction and vice versa.
My favorite history book is The Thirty Years War, by C.V. Wedgwood, which reads like a novel. Have you ever come across Wedgwood? I think she’s wonderful. I’m reading her William the Silent now. I’ll be writing about Wedgwood soon on my blog.
My favorite historical novel (besides any of Mary Renault’s) is The Seven Hills of Paradise, by Rosemary Simpson, which is about the Fourth Crusade and is extremely politically intriguing.
I myself will be crossing the line from academic history to historical fiction. My novel on seventeenth-century China, called Southern Rain, is under contract and should be out soon.
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Congratulations on your contract for your novel. Getting published in today’s market is no small feat!
I am so happy that you are enjoying our blog. We strive to present something a little out of the ordinary, usually involving lesser known historical tidbits or simply what we ourselves enjoy or from our research for our own books. We also try to tie our posts to works of historical fiction wherever possible.
As to the firm line between historical fiction and academic works, I guess that is a holdover from my college days when my history professors turned up their noses at even a whiff of fiction. I’m sure they probably read it for pleasure, but they wanted to keep their students firmly planted in the rigors of the discipline. I agree that good writing is just that, no matter where you find it. In my opinion, however, there may be a danger for the academic who tries to write a serious work in too popular a style. I fear that the in-depth analyses and presentation facts surrounding complicated events and issues may lose something in the effort, but then I may be just too far out of that loop these days. Of course, working as an academic does not preclude the ability to write in an entertaining fashion.
I wonder whether you see a difference between what might be termed works of popular history as opposed to the deeply academic works that only ardent historians read? I would love to hear more about your views!
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Thank you, belatedly, for your reply. I regret that I let the conversation stop. These days, unless I attend to something immediately, it tends to slip my mind.
I think you are right about some academic historians’ suspicious attitudes toward fiction. I think that jealousy may inform it. A colleague once warned me half-jokingly that if an academic historian writes too well, everyone will hate him. Maybe that’s just an example of simple jealousy, unrelated to the differences between history and historical fiction.
One obvious difference between the two genres is the relative lack of dialogue in academic historical writing. Historical fiction writers, or at least the good ones, are the ones who are most able to insert believable dialogue into historical situations. Academic historians almost never employ dialogue, primarily because most of their sources are devoid of dialogue but also because they’re not that good at it. Speaking for myself, I found it very difficult to insert dialogue into academic historical writing, even when I had source material. It just didn’t seem to fit.
So if I had to pinpoint the difference between academic history and historical fiction, I would say that the former lacks dialogue and the latter has it….
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An interesting comment regarding dialogue and one I had not considered, but of course, you are correct. Great dialogue is paramount to entertaining fiction. Unless one has found a prima facia source where the author presented his/her text as dialogue, it is very difficult for academic works to include dialogue without a disclaimer stating that the passage is an imagined form of how a historical discussion might have been conducted. That, I fear, would make for laborious reading indeed and I can just hear the howls and criticisms for doing so!
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I just finished the C.V. Wedgwood biography of William the Silent (and I reviewed it on my blog, Yellow Crane in the Rain), and as much like a novel as it is, it doesn’t contain dialogue, of course. In fact, it contains very few references to the sources. I think she just cites direct references; otherwise, she riffs freely off of them.
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Hmmmm. Few references to sources. I assume from this that she also used few citations in footnotes or endnotes. Did she at least include a bibliography? If not, I find that puzzling and possibly disturbing. Maybe I am just old school, but I want the author to cite his/her sources in a serious historical work.
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She did include a list of sources. In her defense, I should say that she was writing in an earlier age, when most historians tended to wing it, with general but not specific references to their sources.
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Fun to read your first post, Linda.
I did not like history in school – my teachers were not good at all. But I loved history from my early childhood – my patents took us to all kinds of historical park sites. Then I got a magazine subscription to American History Illustrated. And in my high school years I read all of John Jake’s Kent Family Chronicles and a similar series about Australia. I watched the Roots mini-series. I still love reading and writing about history, both fiction and nonfiction.
Now I’ve combined my genealogy and history to write my nonfiction book about the gold rush. I hope it will be as compelling as any novel!
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It is a shame that you had a bad experience in school with history. There are so many ways to make it come alive for students, but obviously your teachers did not use them. Best wishes with your writing!
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Reblogged this on Sharon E. Cathcart and commented:
An excellent look at the history of historical fiction, as well as some insightful analysis. (In the spirit of honesty, though, I must confess that I abandoned “Waverly” with extreme prejudice.)
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Thank you for dropping by!
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